CPWine

• Labels... are on.

  Last Thursday the naked bottles of Quattro and Rockfish Red finally got covered. It was a long, uneventful day. Labeling already full bottles, called "shiners," is frankly anticlimatic. We know how the wine tastes now. There was no anticipation and no welcome feeling of putting the vintage to bed. The [...]
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  Posted: February 26, 2007, 7:35pm EST
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Bottle Neck

  Yesterday we bottled the 2007 Quattro and Rockfish Red. It is great to have them in bottle. Unfortunately, we did not LABEL the bottles yesterday. There is always something that can go wrong. Yesterday it was the labelling machine's turn to foul the works. We use a mobile bottling line' [...]
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  Posted: February 07, 2007, 9:07am EST
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Saturday and there's work to do. Bottling is comin...

  Saturday and there's work to do. Bottling is coming up on February 6. That's this Tuesday. The forecast temperature for Tuesday: 20F! This will add some extra effort to the bottling campaign. The mobile bottling line sets up outside on the crush pad. I'll need to keep the empty bottles' [...]
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  Posted: February 03, 2007, 9:16am EST
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Today I hit the ground running. Well, sort of... f...

  Today I hit the ground running. Well, sort of... first I need to spend some time blogging while I enjoy a fresh baked biscuit and cup of coffee and avoid going out the door into the cold, cold world. Seriously, I have loads to do this week. Today I must [...]
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  Posted: January 29, 2007, 8:05am EST
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Well, I'm back. Not that I went anywhere other tha...

  Well, I'm back. Not that I went anywhere other than Procrastinationville. My last blog was in early November and now it's late January. Not too much has transpired. We have a new kitten. The country has a new congress. The world has a new year.
  
  In the winery, [...]
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  Posted: January 26, 2007, 8:22am EST
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Nouveau-to-go

  On November 16th the "plan" is to release our first wine of the 2006 vintage, our Nouveau Red. That is the same day that Beaujolais nouveau is released in Paris and all over France and the world. Yep, that's the plan. I should be able to make it. This year' [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2006, 5:57pm EST
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• The past two weeks or so have gone by too fast. Th...

  The past two weeks or so have gone by too fast. The urgency of the work has subsided, thankfully, but the amount is still up there. The Cabernet Franc, picked and referred to last blog, has been destemmed, fermented, and pressed-off. It currently sits in a settling tank and will [...]
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  Posted: October 24, 2006, 8:37am EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• October 12. 2006

  Sad news today. Daniel, my main vineyard guy, and his crew were picking Cabernet Franc when he received word from Mexico that his father had died. His father had been ill for a while, but had seemed to turn the corner. Still, Daniel was planning on going down for a [...]
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  Posted: October 12, 2006, 8:38pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Les Miserables

  Not all that long ago I was a vineyard consultant. I met many people who wanted to put in grapes and were excited by the prospect. I would meet them at their land and go over what was involved in terms of sweat and cash. I also tried to convey [...]
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  Posted: October 06, 2006, 4:42pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• More...

  Friday I picked up a U-Haul trailer to take cases of wine to Leesburg for the wine festival we were participating in. U-Haul locations used to be everywhere, but no more. The nearby garage stopped offering them a year ago. Though there are two listed U-Haul outlets in Crozet, neither [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2006, 8:11pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Quick Update

  Sorry for not posting the past few days. I am deep in harvest now and time, motivation, and energy are all short at the end of the day. My problem now is that I can't even recall what I did on Monday. This is Thursday! Focus, Tim...
  
  Okay here's [...]
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  Posted: September 28, 2006, 8:14pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Bauhaus "r" Us

  I received a kind email from David Carnes, vineyard manager at Windham winery in Hillsboro, Virginia. David was dropping off wine for our mutually-used distributor on Friday and it was his first visit to Cardinal Point. In his email, referring to our architecture, he says "Cardinal Point has a hipness" [...]
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  Posted: September 24, 2006, 11:18am EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Bob did it again.

  Bob Hughes, Charlottesville's Superstar Realtor, was my guest harvest-helper today. Bob has worked on bottling days in the winery several times as have many friends. This, however, was Bob's second day helping harvest inthe vineyard of this still young 2006 crush (period of time when grapes are picked and made [...]
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  Posted: September 21, 2006, 6:26pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• More Chard...

  Today we resumed the Chardonnay harvest. Big picking day, though. I'm selling this fruit as well and won't know the true weight until it's pressed, but I figure we picked over 7 tons. I was helped by Roberto "Pacho" Priani. Roberto met and married a neighbor and employee of ours,' [...]
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  Posted: September 20, 2006, 9:03pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Deliverance

  Today's delivery of Chardonnay to a winery a couple of hours north was mercifully uneventful. Man, the truck was really nice, though. Even carrying an estimated 3.34 tons of fruit, it handled like my Accord?. It had a powered lift gate which made the loading and delivery a snap. And' [...]
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  Posted: September 19, 2006, 9:20pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• 2¢

  So, yesterday I pick up the rental truck. It's huge but handles awesome, honestly. I got it from Penske in Charlottesville. Since I was in C-ville, I stopped by Old Navy to get some t-shirts. Okay, yes, these shirts are incredibly cheap. They're on sale for about $1.93 each. BUT, [...]
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  Posted: September 19, 2006, 7:23am EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Daily log...

  Today we started picking chardonnay. All grapes at Cardinal Point are picked by hand. Those hands usually belong to Daniel and Josefina Sanchez and the workers that they gather. It is pretty tough work though more mind numbing than muscle aching. The pickers this morning were just harvesting 220 lugs [...]
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  Posted: September 18, 2006, 1:53pm EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine

• Throwing monkeys at Shakespeare...

  Hello and welcome to my first blog posting.
  
  My name is Tim Gorman and I grow the grapes and make the wine on my family's farm, Cardinal Point Vineyard and Winery. The farm and winery are in Afton, Virginia, which is along the Blue Ridge Mountains, just west of' [...]
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  Posted: September 17, 2006, 8:49am EDT
  by Cardinal Point Wine